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We really love taking the missionaries out to lunch. Every transfer, as some leave and others arrive, we want to get to know the new ones and make them feel welcome in the Valley. (Plus it’s an excuse to go out to a restaurant, which I always enjoy.)

Here are our latest lunch buddies…

Whew! That’s a lot of eating out in ties and skirts…

As usual, this latest group of missionaries wanted to head out to the Imperial Sand Dunes. Although we don’t always go (having been there many times already), today seemed like a good opportunity. Off we went, piling into the mission vans and driving an hour north.

They always love time in the nice warm sand.

We posed for a group shot… quite a few of us!

Afterward, we decided to clean the vans and get rid of all the sand. We stopped at a local car wash and went to work. Not surprisingly, sand was everywhere. Some of it had to be vacuumed out of hair…

And even pockets!

Good times, as always.

Back in June, when we were new to the area, we bought some cacti at a local show. We set two of them outside in the hot sun, and after a day one of them was practically burned to death. We’d been told (by a cactus expert at the show!) that a lot of sun and heat would be good, but apparently they’d grown up pampered or something. We promptly brought them indoors and attempted to nurture them back to life in a cooler environment, with more water.

Anyway, fast forward to today, when the succulent finally expired and the burned one gave up another lobe (of five original lobes, only one remained). We decided it was time to buy some new cacti.

In the back left is the solo-lobe one that didn’t like the heat. At front right is the other “original” prickly, which seems to be thriving. The other two are new, and we’ll see how they do. We hope to take all of them back to Montana as reminders of our mission in the desert.

Our friend Michelle is a geologist, and she has an amazing rock collection. I’ve always enjoyed rocks and gems, and fancied myself a bit of a collector when I was a kid (although my collection was generally just pretty stones I found on the ground). Today she showed me a sample of iron pyrite, popularly known as “fool’s gold”.

This isn’t an ordinary sample, though. It includes two massive cubic crystals, which is really unusual… and probably won’t really fool anyone into thinking it’s gold. Typical deposits of iron pyrite have thousands of crystals like this, but much much smaller and crowded together, making them at least a little more believable as gold.

So cool!

Our friend Tamra gave us some eggs her hens laid. I think they look pretty awesome!

Today was a beautiful sunny day, with the temperature sitting right around… 80 degrees?

We were out in San Diego today, and since we have an annual museum pass, we decided to check out the Automotive Museum. They have an impressive collection of old (and odd) cars. I especially enjoyed the DeLorean.

Of course this car, which would’ve been little more than a footnote of history, is iconic from the Back to the Future series of movies. It was cool to sit in one!

The US Navy’s Blue Angels demonstration fighter squadron has their “winter home” here in El Centro, so they spend a few months here practicing for their air shows. We can see them in the distance almost every day, and it’s fun to watch them. Today we happened to be driving west to San Diego, which took us just south of their airfield. We noticed the formation as we were going past.

We pulled off the road and watched for a bit, enjoying the “practice show” overhead.

It was great fun, and we’re excited to see the real show next month…

For many, many years, Thom and I have had a tradition of going out on backpacking trips that doubled as photography expeditions. One of the things I enjoy about our time together is that either one of us can suddenly say to the other, “Hey, let’s stop here– I see a good shot.” And we’ll pull over to the side of the road (if we’re driving), or stop on the trail for a few minutes, or hike over to a viewpoint, or whatever, because there might be an interesting angle for a photo. Sometimes it works out, and the photo is pretty cool; other times it turns out the angle isn’t really that interesting. But it’s fun to have the opportunity to experiment.

Anyway, a few weeks ago my friend Woody said he occasionally drives out “into the Valley” to take photos. He has an old Canon EOS DSLR and enjoys watching birds and just looking for those “good shots”. I told him I’d love to join him sometime, and yesterday he asked if I had some time today. I did, and we grabbed our cameras and headed out together.

My “real” camera is a beautiful Canon R6 that I absolutely love. Last year I decided not to bring it on our mission, because I didn’t think I’d have a lot of opportunities to really use it. We wouldn’t be backpacking, and in fact we haven’t even hiked much. Since then, I’ve had several times when I kick myself for that decision… it wouldn’t have taken much space in the car, and it would’ve come in handy. Bother all. But I picked up a used Canon Powershot S110 on eBay, since it has manual controls, raw capability, and is a nice little portable camera that I’d owned many years ago. It’s not quite the same, of course, but in a pinch it’ll do.

We spent three or four hours driving all over the Imperial Valley, passing fields and power plants and even bird sanctuaries. Since Woody enjoys the birds, we made several stops so he could photograph flocks. And, just like my trips with Thom, several times I asked him to pull over because I saw something interesting. It was a lot of fun, and admist all the driving and shooting we had a chance to talk about all sorts of stuff.

Interestingly, when I looked at the results, many of them had a sort of post-apocalyptic wasteland vibe. There are plenty of fields full of crops– this is, after all, one of the most agriculturally productive areas in the world– but pictures of crops didn’t seem compelling so I’d taken pictures of other things. Here are the results.

Yeah, these aren’t going to win any contests, but I really enjoyed time with my friend.

A few months ago, I bought a keyboard. I play nearly every day, although honestly I don’t really seem to be improving.

Lately I’ve been messing around with some of the “voices” (also known as instruments). I’ve also been tinkering with chords, despite knowing virtually nothing about music theory. Still, despite my profound lack of musical talent, it’s fun to play.